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As for your other, appallingly ridiculous assumption: Penn SAS >>>>>>> Cornell A&S. Just look at the revealed preference article: 70% of those students accepted to both Penn and Cornell choose Penn. The 30% who go to Cornell is quite likely almost exclusively for their engineering.
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<p>And what percentage of the common admit number for Penn do you think is being driven by Wharton?</p>
<p>Beyond that, the bigger problem with common admit statistics is that they fail to take into account all of the students who only applied to Cornell or Penn, but not both, because maybe they only wanted to be in the city, or out in the country...</p>
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One last thing: Cornell CAS isn't even CLOSE to 10%. It was 18% percent last year, and that was regular decision only. Early Decision probably moved up to 20% or so.
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<p>Cornell CAS as a whole was 18 percent last year. If you limit it to regular decision it was closer to 14-15 percent. And those numbers do not include the 1,000 students who probably wanted to apply to Cornell CAS but never bothered to indicate so on their application.</p>
<p><a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000146.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000146.pdf</a></p>
<p>One thing to consider when looking at acceptance rates is that Penn is really able to lower its acceptance rates due its aggressive use of ED. If Cornell admits 35% of its class ED (thinking it is fairer to allow more slots open for kids who may not be as well off to not have to worry about financial aid), but Penn admits upwards of 50% ED, what effect do you think that has acceptance rates?</p>
<p>The bigger question for you is this: How do the acceptance rates tell you anything about the difficulty of getting into a school and the underlying quality of the student body? And if they don't tell you anything, than why do you use it.</p>
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They don't measure Cornell A&S alone
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<p>Of course they do, you are just ignorant of the facts.</p>
<p><a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000176.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000176.pdf</a></p>
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Not to mention that in terms of HS decile (penn 96%, Cornell 87%) and SAT averages (Cornell: 1290 - 1500, Penn: 1330 - 1540) Penn is much higher.
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<p>Cornell CAS and Engineering are at 94 percent. Suffice to say, when less than half of all schools are now providing class rank, I don't think it is all that important.</p>
<p>The bigger problem for you is that Penn (like Duke) holds tight with its admissions data. Why, I don't know. It fails to provide a public Common Data Set, and it fails to break out its admissions data for each of its undergraduate colleges. Cornell really has nothing to hide. It knows that the admissions and rankings game over the last decade has gotten sillier and sillier and it still provides a quality education to quality students.</p>
<p>So if you have any actual source for admissions statistics for Penn SAS, I would love to see it. Until then, we can only compare Cornell CAS to Penn as a whole.</p>
<p>And when you compare Cornell CAS to Penn as a whole any perceived differential goes away, because you really shouldn't be lumping in thousands of hotel students and agriculture students when you are trying to make a sound comparison, should you?</p>
<p>Average Cornell CAS SAT score: 1415
Average Penn SAT score: 1425</p>
<p>University</a> of Pennsylvania Profile - SAT Scores and Admissions Data for the University of Pennsylvania - Penn</p>
<p>Let me know if you have a legitimate SAT range for any of the individual colleges at Penn. (I doubt you do.) But I suspect that SAS at Penn is actually lower than the 1425 average due to the presence of Wharton and the School of Engineering.</p>
<p>On top of this, once you consider the fact that Penn is less socioeconomically diverse than Cornell (and household income is hugely correlated with SAT scores), I can't understand any argument that Penn SAS students are quantitatively "smarter" than Cornell CAS students.</p>
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Do you honestly believe that Cornell would sacrifice actual intelligence for more mediocre students who are more interested in their majors?
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<p>That's not the point. Cornell is attracting some of the most dedicated students in the country (if not the world) in many niche majors like ornithology or collective bargaining. I would much rather have somebody who is passionate about what they do than somebody who looks great on paper. </p>
<p>Suffice to say that there are many more programs at Cornell vis-a-vis Penn, where the admissions committee takes a much more holistic view of the student, be it architecture or hotel or agriculture or textiles or ornithology. </p>
<p><a href="with%20the%20exception%20of%20Physics%20and%20Philosophy%20and%20Creative%20Writing">quote</a>,
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<p>... and chemistry and evolutionary behavior and architecture and agriculture and sociology and math and computer science and comparative literature and labor relations and human development and every single engineering discipline under the sun...</p>